


When The Night Closes In (I'll Be There)

by gansey_is_our_king



Series: We Are Fragile Birds with Broken Wings [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish is Bad at Feelings, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre Epilogue, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, Sorry Not Sorry, adam pov, also very briefly featuring the Fox Way Ladies and the Gansey family, boys being sad and angsty, boys kissing (kinda??), i live for angst, mostly featuring angst, post trk, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gansey_is_our_king/pseuds/gansey_is_our_king
Summary: “You should let me drive,” Adam said.  His voice sounded far away, even to him.  He felt far away, his body cut loose with the sudden absence of Cabeswater.  Silence in his deaf ear where there should be the dry whisper of leaves, and a quiet behind his ribs where the ley line had once thrummed to match his heartbeat.I will be your hands.  I will be your eyes.He already missed it, his want for the familiar comfort a steady ache.Adam knew that ache.





	When The Night Closes In (I'll Be There)

**Author's Note:**

> My hot new take on the immediate aftermath of The Raven King.

Cabeswater was gone, and somehow the world kept on turning.  Rain spattered the slick blacktop around them, and pinged like bullets off the cars, which were still parked in the road with all the doors hanging open.  Adam could feel the cold concrete through his faded jeans, the sting of the loose gravel that was digging into his knees, water and blood soaking the worn denim. 

There was dream stuff everywhere.

He ran inventory, something to keep his mind silent and busy while they waited for Gansey to wake up, to take his next breath. There were black stones worn as smooth as glass, and flower petals in impossible shades of blue, and paper marked with his own cramped but familiar handwriting.

Adam found a scrap of that paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe and turned it over carefully in his bruised fingers.  Blood spotted the damp surface, red on white, the colours stark and violent together.  He struggled to read the smudged Latin, squinting past his crippling exhaustion, the cold rain, and felt a lump form in his throat when he finally made out the words.

_Unguibus et rostro._

His hands were shaking.

He dared to look at Ronan for a moment, the other boy slumped over next to Gansey in the grassy ditch beside the road, all of his armour stripped away.  He had stopped crying, but his cheeks were still blotchy from it, and the black gunk that had trickled from his ears and nose as the demon tried to unmake him was dried there now, turning crusty like a scab.

Adam wanted to touch him.  Hold him.

He wished he knew what Ronan needed just then, but bile rose at the back of his throat at the thought, shame and guilt churning inside his gut.  Half an hour ago his own hands had almost _killed_ Ronan and yet, selfishly, he would risk that again.

He turned his face away.  Tried to remember how to breathe.

No one else noticed, except for the Orphan Girl, who had never strayed far away to begin with and now crept up beside him.  She reached out and gently touched the bruises on his left arm, her pale fingers brushing across the angry, winding marks that nearly reached his elbow.

Adam felt like he was coming apart at the seams, his stitching pulled loose.

He was so caught up in his own misery that he missed the exact moment when Gansey opened his eyes again.

Blue let out a small sob, and there was a frantic scuffle, and by the time Adam had looked around she was already hurling herself on top of Gansey, both of them sprawled back messily in the wet grass.  Ronan opened his mouth, and then closed it.  Adam thought there was a good chance that he was going to start crying again, but Ronan just sat there in the ditch with all the muscles in his shoulders knotted up and his knuckles burning white, his mouth twisted in a hurt snarl.  

Adam got to his feet, knees feeling wobbly with something like relief, as Blue finally extracted herself from Gansey and sat up again.

“How are you feeling?” she said, and her voice shook.

Gansey blinked around at them all, his eyes flicking over Blue and then Ronan, and finally Henry, who was hanging back slightly.  He looked at Adam last, struggling to prop himself up on his elbows, his face going pale with the effort.   

“Oh, don’t,” Blue said gently, reaching out to push him back down. 

Henry let out a slightly frantic laugh and scratched at a bug bite on his arm. 

Ronan just stared.

Adam thought he knew how the other boy was feeling. 

He could not quite believe that this was real either.  

Gansey, alive.  Gansey, breathing.  Gansey, back from the dead for the second time in his life, and this time all because of them.

“What happened?” Gansey said, and he sounded exactly like Gansey.

“You were fucking dead,” Ronan spat. 

He looked like he was going to hit Gansey.  Maybe he wanted to, but then Gansey reached out and touched his shoulder with his fingertips, very gingerly, which was unlike him, and Ronan crumpled.  He lurched forward and grabbed Gansey furiously, hugging him tighter than Adam had ever seen him hug anyone before, even Matthew.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, but he didn’t push Ronan away.

Adam slunk a little closer to them all, pushing his hands into the pockets of his damp jeans.  Orphan Girl came with him, clinging to the frayed hem of his sweater, her hooves clacking on the cement, and then squishing in the wet grass when Adam reached the edge of the road.

Ronan was saying something to Gansey, his voice barely a thread, the tone of it going wobbly and desperate.  Adam caught a few creative swear words before Gansey interrupted him, one hand landing on his shoulder again so that he could ease Ronan back a little.  They stared at each other, pale and shaky and breathing hard, each gasp ragged in the damp air.

“I’m not dead,” Gansey said quietly.  “I’m okay, Ronan.”

“Fuck,” Ronan muttered.  There was so much loss twisted up in his voice that Adam could hardly bear it.  He swallowed, and felt Orphan Girl tug on his sweater, and when he glanced down at her she gave him a _look_.  There was something very Ronan about it, and also something very animal in her huge eyes as she blinked at him. 

Adam wanted to turn away.  He wanted to run.

His heart was a bird that beat against the cage of his ribs. 

When he just stood there, doing nothing, barely managing to breathe, Orphan Girl let go of his sweater and went to Ronan instead. He let her crawl right into his lap, holding her as she settled, his arms circling her narrow frame carefully while Blue fiddled with the clips in her hair and Henry absently checked his phone.

Gansey looked at Adam.  “Parrish?” he asked, and Adam knew what he needed.

He took a deep breath, the cold air creeping into his chest. 

“Cabeswater,” he said, and in his exhaustion, the word formed clumsily in his mouth, his tongue slurring the vowels.  He could not stop his hateful Henrietta accent.  “We sacrificed it for you, or it sacrificed itself, when we asked it to.  I didn’t know if it would actually work, but—you’re here.” 

His knees were still shaking.  Adam wanted to sit down more than anything, but he thought that once he did, he probably wouldn’t be able to get back up again.

“What do you remember?” Blue said. 

Gansey shrugged gracelessly.  He was still trying to sit up.  “Not very much,” he admitted.  “You kissed me, and then I just—well.  I died.  I felt my heart stop.  I mean, Jesus.  Would you listen to me?  What a crazy thing.”

“And Cabeswater?” Adam pressed.  “Can you feel it?”

Gansey frowned.  “No.  I just… I feel tired.  Did I hit my head when I fell over?”

“I don’t think so,” Blue said, but she reached out and touched her fingers lightly to his temple.  Gansey leaned in to her touch right away, his eyes sliding almost shut and a small smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

“I didn’t think that I was going to see you again,” he said, very quietly.

“I know,” Blue whispered.

They were very close, and Adam felt like he was intruding on a private moment.  He looked away, watching Ronan pick irritably at the leather bands around his wrist, and feeling the itch of the bruises around his own where Blue had tied the ribbon to keep his possessed hands from killing Ronan.  Orphan Girl had left the watch with him, and it was a comforting weight, even though when he down glanced at it he noticed that the hands had stopped moving, the batteries dead or waterlogged or worse.

“Not to ruin the moment or anything,” Henry finally piped up.  “But I think we should probably get the cars out of the road before the police come by and start asking awkward questions.”

Gansey opened his eyes, and nodded.  “Good idea.  Where should we go?”

“My house?” Blue suggested.  “Mom and Calla are probably worried, and I need to tell them that we destroyed of the demon.”  She stood up, and Henry galloped forward to help her pull Gansey to his feet as well.  He swayed for a moment, and then slung one arm over Henry, a small, happy smile forming when Blue grabbed his hand.

Orphan Girl jumped up too, and ran back over to Adam.

Ronan joined them all last, his pale hands flexing in and out of fists.

Gansey and Henry staggered rather awkwardly over to where the BMW was parked, with Blue tugged along behind them, and then Gansey climbed into the backseat.  Blue slid in next to him, scooting over so that Orphan Girl could fit on her other side. 

Henry gave the three of them a salute.

“I’ll see you in a few,” he said.  He turned to Adam.  “Parrish.  Middle Lynch.”

Ronan just glared down at the tarmac. 

Adam waved tiredly at Henry.  “Thanks,” he said, surprised that he meant it.        

They all watched as Henry got in behind the wheel of his sleek silver car, and the engine hummed to life.  The tires crunched over stones and torn flower petals and churned through blood as Henry pulled away.

His taillights glowed red against the dusky horizon.

“You should let me drive,” Adam said.  His voice sounded far away, even to him.  He _felt_ far away, his body cut loose with the sudden absence of Cabeswater. Silence in his deaf ear where there should be the dry whisper of leaves, and a quiet behind his ribs where the ley line had once thrummed to match his heartbeat. 

_I will be your hands.  I will be your eyes._

He already missed it, his want for the familiar comfort a steady ache.

Adam knew that ache.

It had followed him his whole life. 

Ronan was staring at him.  He dangled the keys to the BMW in his right hand, the key ring hooked around his bony index finger, and when Adam reached out the other boy let him take them without argument. 

Their knuckles brushed for a second, red on white.

Adam jerked away, guilt searing through him again. He was close enough now to see the bruises that his hands had left on Ronan, even though he tried not to look. The purple and blue marks circled his throat like some kind of macabre necklace, making his voice scratchy when he spoke.

“Whatever.”

He stomped around the car to get in on the passenger side, and his expression was bullet proof.  He slammed his door behind him, not nearly as hard as Adam had expected. The BMW hardly rocked at all with the subdued force.

He got in the car too.  It was basic instinct to slot the key in the ignition, coax the engine to turn over with a roar that shook in his bones.  The radio was off for once, and as Adam drove back to 300 Fox Way, his fingers gripping the wheel so tightly that his skin almost felt fused to the smooth leather, he could hear the soft patter of rain on the roof and windows, the steady whir of the tires on the wet road.

Henry was already there, waiting in his car for them.

Adam parked neatly behind it, and held the BMW keys out to Ronan again, but the other boy didn’t take them.  He was staring through the window, at the crooked house with the sign labelled _Psychic_ sticking out of the lawn, where the front door had just burst open.  Maura and Calla came hurrying down the path, and Blue released Gansey to jump out of the car and into their arms.  She was crying again, and Maura was crying too, and even Calla looked a bit tearful, her eyes softer, her expression less irritated than usual.

Gansey climbed out, only a little unsteady, and Maura hugged him too.

They were talking, all three of them.  Adam could hear their muffled voices through the open back door, but he was too tired to listen.  He looked over at Ronan again, and found that Ronan was already looking at him, which was actually not that surprising. 

It felt like the most normal thing to happen all day.

Adam raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head at the house. Ronan nodded.  Then he reached into the cup holder between them, and picked up his phone.  When he swiped his thumb across the screen, smearing bright spots of blood, Adam saw that there were five missed calls from Declan.

His throat immediately started to close off.

How could he have forgotten about Matthew? 

Was he okay?  Was he even alive?

Orphan Girl seemed to be unharmed, despite the black ooze that had dried underneath her nose and around her ears, identical to the stuff that Ronan was currently trying to pick off his face with a ragged thumbnail.

Adam disengaged his seatbelt and climbed out. 

It was still raining, the air shockingly cold and damp on his skin.  He saw Ronan shove open the passenger door a little harder than necessary.  Maura and Calla were already making their way back toward the house, with Blue and Gansey in tow.  Henry had joined them.  Adam went around the BMW to let Orphan Girl out, and she instantly reached out to grab his hand, her pale fingers squeezing.  Adam felt the slight press on his new bruises, but he let her hold on anyway, not wanting to remember and yet needing to relive the horror of it, a sick satisfaction rolling through him when he let the shame take control.

_Just like your father, too much monster blood._

_You are never going to be good enough._

His sneakers smacked on the damp concrete as he trailed after Ronan, and Adam could not quite breath, but that was okay.  The hazy feeling it left him with felt safe.  He stepped inside the house after Orphan Girl, and reminded her to wipe her muddy hooves on the mat before she ran off. Then he cleaned the dirt and grass and blood from his sneakers and made his way to the kitchen.

“Adam.  Do you want some tea?  Are you alright?”

That was Gansey, seated at the table with Blue folded into a chair beside him.  Already they seemed inseparable, a matching set, and Adam remembered a time when this would have made him burn with jealousy.  Now he just felt extremely tired, and numb all over, his body wrung out after everything that had happened. 

He realized too late that Ronan had not come with him, and mumbled a hasty apology before retracing his steps.  He found Calla in the hallway, watching Orphan Girl chew on loose threads in the rug with clear apprehension.  Ronan was slumped on the sofa in the reading room, the muscles in his shoulders knotted tight underneath the straps of his dirty black tank, all his armour up again.

There was a beat.

Adam waited to get his head bitten off.  He almost wanted it, because at least that would give him an excuse to snap back, and a fight would make him feel _something_.  But then Ronan turned and looked at him, his eyes rimmed with red, the whites around his bright blue irises bloodshot from crying.  His sharp edges dulled when Adam took a step closer, hesitating for one… two… three seconds before he sank down on the sofa beside Ronan.  They were close enough that their shoulders bumped together, and Adam felt the warm friction of bare skin rubbing against his faded sweater.

The lump was back in his throat.

Ronan slid his phone across the coffee table, where Adam had watched Blue turn over a tarot card at his first psychic reading. It felt like a hundred years must have passed since that afternoon, and in that time Adam had been so many different people.   

He took the phone, knowing what Ronan wanted from him without even asking, and dialled.  Declan picked up on the second ring. 

“Ronan?”

Adam took a deep breath. “It’s Adam,” he said. 

“Parrish?  Where’s Ronan?” Declan demanded.  “Is he alright?”

His voice caught on the last word. 

Adam had never heard him talk like that before.

“Yes,” he said, and when the word passed his lips it hit him again too, that Ronan really was alright.  That he was alive.  That they all were.  The fresh wave of relief and exhaustion spilling over inside him made Adam slightly dizzy. 

“He’s fine,” he added.

“I want to talk to him,” Declan said immediately. “Give him the phone.”

Adam looked at Ronan.  He was staring at the floor, hands braced on his knees.

“You can talk to me,” Adam said.  “He asked me to call.  Is Matthew okay?”

Declan hesitated.  He seemed to be grinding his teeth together, but he finally muttered, “Fine. He’s fine.  He is now, at least.  What the hell is going on there?  What have you been messing around with?”

“Long story,” Adam said.  He glanced at Ronan again.  

“When Matthew…” Declan started, his voice rough and quiet, but then he cleared his throat and added more firmly, “Things feel different, even here.  What else can you tell me?”

What else could he tell Declan?

Aurora was dead.  His _mother_ was dead.  The Lynch brothers were orphans now.

Adam felt the twist in his gut, coupled with the urge to vomit. 

He didn’t know what to say.

“Parrish?” Declan challenged.  

Ronan finally looked up at him, his face all sharp angles and harsh lines, but Adam could see past them to his shattered exterior. He gazed back at Ronan, his heart pounding.  After a moment, Ronan reached out and took the phone from him.

“Declan,” he said, and that was it. 

They just sat there, Ronan with the phone pressed to his ear, his breathing ragged and low, Declan not saying anything on the line either, which seemed like something of a miracle to Adam.

Finally, Ronan muttered, “I’m coming to D.C.  I’ll leave tomorrow morning.” 

He hung up.  Adam watched him set the phone back on the coffee table, turning it face down so that he didn’t have to look at the screen. 

He wanted to say something, but there were no words. 

Not the right ones, anyway.   

Instead he stood up when Ronan did, and followed him dazedly upstairs, passing Calla and the Orphan Girl again on their way to the tiny bathroom on the second floor.  It was empty. Ronan gestured Adam inside first, and closed the door behind them both, before sliding the lock carefully into place. He leaned over the sink to check his face in the mirror, picking at the black smeared across his skin until Adam reached out to grab his wrist. 

Ronan froze at his touch.  Reflection gazed at reflection in the mirror.

Fear jolted through Adam, and he quickly let go of Ronan again, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans instead. How could he dare to touch Ronan, after seeing the damage that his hands had already done?  How could he assume that Ronan would let himself be touched by someone that had tried to kill him only an hour ago?

There was not enough air.

Adam wanted to open the door.  Not only that, he wanted to run, back down the stairs and right out of the house.  He wanted to, but before he could move away at all Ronan reached out and touched his cheek, knuckles brushing lightly over the raw skin. 

“Adam,” he said, speaking low and soft.  His mouth twitched.

Adam closed his eyes against the hot tears building up behind his lids. 

He wanted to say _sorry._

He wanted to say _how can you even trust me anymore?_

He wanted to say _don’t stop._

Ronan grabbed his wrist in his cold fingers.  Adam flinched, but Ronan just brought the hand closer to his face, and gently kissed the palm of his hand.  Then he kissed each one of Adam’s fingers, his mouth dry and warm, chapped lips scraping across the new bruises.

“Ronan?” Adam said.  He meant it as a warning, but it came out like a question.

“It wasn’t you,” Ronan said.  “I know that.  It wasn’t you.”

His voice was broken with exhaustion, but entirely certain. His eyes challenged Adam to disagree, and fuck, if they weren’t good at that.  Disagreeing, and hating, and letting their emotions run together and unchecked. Adam didn’t think that he had ever argued with someone so much in his life.  But he also didn’t think that he had ever needed someone so much in his life, and the conflicting thoughts made him feel sick.

_What do you want, Adam?_

It was the first time all year that he thought he knew the answer.

He hated himself.

He pulled his hand away from Ronan’s grip, and grabbed his shoulder instead, steering him over to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. Ronan slumped down at once, which was a little surprising, honestly, because he never did what Adam wanted him to without putting up a fight first. 

Adam could feel his pulse throbbing behind his eyes as he opened cupboards and drawers, searching for a cloth.  When he found a clean one, he ran it underneath the warm tap and used it to clean black ooze away from Ronan’s face, dabbing carefully at the skin beneath his nose and around his ears, his other hand clasped around the back of his buzzed skull.  Short hair pricked at his palm, the sensitive skin ticklish.

Adam was shaking.

_How can you trust me?_ he kept thinking, almost saying, the words stuck in his tight throat as he rinsed black down the sink.  _How do you really know that it wasn’t me?  It’s in my blood, all the hate and the hurt.  I’ve been bred a monster._   

He turned the hot tap on all the way, and steam rose in the bathroom, swirling around him and fogging over the mirror. 

Adam was glad for it.

He didn’t want to see his face, just enough like his father to make him hate it.

Scalding water splashed into the sink, and Adam stuck his hands under it until the skin felt raw, but not long enough for Ronan to realize what he was doing.  Then he shut off the tap and wiped his sleeve across the mirror, still avoiding his reflection in it while Ronan inspected his own face for more of the black goo.  Adam had managed to scrub away the worst of it, and the rest would come off when Ronan finally showered. 

He stood there, too close, watching in a daze as Ronan reached up and ran a hand over his own short hair, fingers pressing into his scalp, and then scraping down the back of his neck.  Where his tattoo poked out above his tank top, the black hooks were violent against his white skin, the pattern somehow vicious and lovely at the same time.

Adam watched to touch it again.  Rub the pad of his thumb over the rubbery skin.

“Are you really going to drive all the way to D.C. tomorrow?” he blurted out.

Ronan shrugged, and as he did his thorns poked back out.  “Probably.”

“What about Orphan Girl?” Adam pressed.

“I’ll take her with me.”

“And what about Gansey?”  

There was a beat. 

Adam knew it was an unfair question, but he could not stop himself. 

“Dick can look after himself,” Ronan snarled.

“That’s not what I meant,” Adam said, even though he knew that Ronan knew.

He waited for the real fight to start, thirsty for the insults and anger that a new argument with Ronan always brought, but Ronan just banged out of the bathroom and left the door swinging open behind him as he thumped down the hall.  Adam heard his footsteps on the stairs.

He hated that, for once, Ronan had decided to walk away. And he loved it.

It made his chest knot up, everything he was feeling.

He fought the urge to climb into the bathtub and close his eyes, pull the shower curtain across the block the light, and fall asleep there.  He knew he couldn’t do that.  Not yet. Instead he followed Ronan, and the sound of low voices, the sickly sweet smell of footy and fruity tea that drifted from the kitchen, where stories were being shared.

Henry leaned against the counter with an untouched cup balanced next to his elbow, and his phone out again.  Orphan Girl was under the table, possibly chewing the legs off a chair.  Blue and Maura sat opposite each other, both with nearly empty cups of tea, and Gansey appeared to be falling asleep over his.  Calla prowled around the edges of the room.  Ronan slouched near the sink, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his expression twisted into something that almost passed for sour.

Blue looked over at Adam when he walked in, and then at Ronan, her eyes narrowing in a silent question.

_What is going on with you guys?_

Adam waved his hand, a vague attempt to placate her curiosity.

He was so tired.

Possibly because she was a psychic, but maybe because she was a mother and also deeply observant, Maura said, “I think I’ve heard enough for tonight.  You all need to get some rest.  Blue, let me see your face.  I think we should take you back to the hospital to get the stitching looked at.”  

“I’m fine,” Blue said right away.  “It doesn’t even hurt.” 

She was obviously lying, and when Adam tried to catch her eye again, she carefully avoided looking at him.  Instead she nudged Gansey until he jerked upright, and then she pushed back her chair, helping him back to his feet. 

“I can stand by myself,” Gansey insisted, but he let her put an arm around him.

“Where do you want?” she said.

Gansey blushed.  “I mean—we can stay here.  Or you can stay, and we’ll come back again first thing in the morning.”

“I’m coming with you,” Blue said firmly.  “Adam, are you okay to drive?”

He nodded.  “Yeah.” 

Maura was frowning around at them all, and she opened her mouth to protest, but then hesitated and closed it again, shaking her head in a tired way.  “Will you call me if anything happens?” she said finally.

Blue let go of Gansey long enough to hug her.  “I promise.”

“Take care of yourselves, all of you,” Calla offered.

Adam got down on his hands and knees to coax Orphan Girl out from underneath the table, and there was a bit of a jam in the narrow hallway as everyone tried to find their keys and shoes and coats. 

Maura hugged Blue tightly again, just before she went out the front door. 

“Please be careful,” she said in a quiet, earnest voice Adam had never heard from his own mother.  “Even though everything seems to have worked out, you could still be in danger. I love you.”

Adam turned away, pretending that he had not heard. Jealousy curdled inside him, a hungry and vicious thing, but he focused on guiding Orphan Girl outside and down the cracked front path to the car.  He buckled her in with nervous hands while Ronan slammed back into the passenger seat. Blue and Gansey joined them in the street a minute later, holding hands again, and they paused next to the BMW long enough for Blue to wrap her arms around Henry.  Gansey shook his hand.

“Come see us tomorrow?” Blue insisted.

Henry tugged at a pink clip above her ear.  “You can be sure of it.”

He flashed his high beams at them in the rear view mirror and then drove away.

“Monmouth?” Adam asked, once everyone else had climbed into the BMW.

Blue caught his eye in the rear view mirror and nodded. “Yes.”

“What about the Pig?” Gansey said.

“What about it?” Ronan snarled, speaking for the first time since he had stormed out of the Fox Way bathroom and away from Adam.  His voice still came out ragged and hoarse, but the angry set to his jaw softened just a little when he turned around to look at Gansey in the back seat. 

Blue squeezed his hand.  “We passed it on the way to you and Henry.”

“Yes.  I—” Gansey hesitated, and then he added simply, “It stopped.”

Rain continued to tap on the windows. 

The world became slickly distorted outside.

Orphan Girl snivelled quietly next to Gansey, and put her cheek on his shoulder.  She was still skittish around all of them, but when Adam glanced over at Ronan, he could recognize the badly disguised anguish in his face, and knew that Orphan Girl was doing what he could not—keeping close to Gansey, trying to comfort him.

“It’s getting late,” Adam said uncertainly, even though by this point it hardly mattered anymore.  He would have followed Gansey to the end of the earth, just as Ronan would, just as Blue would, because Gansey was their king.           

He started the car.

As he pulled carefully away from the curb, Adam caught sight of two serious faces staring after them through the kitchen window. A third, pale figure gazed down intently at the BMW from a window on the second floor.  Black hair billowed like a storm around her head, and there was a smile curling her thin mouth.

Adam retraced their earlier route down the dull Henrietta streets.  It was already getting dark, and no other cars seemed to be out driving around, the empty road slick with shadows and rain.  Blue was the first one of them to spot the Camaro, the orange paint garish and violent in the watery twilight, and she told Adam to pull in behind it. 

He did, slamming the gearstick clumsily into park.

They all piled out.

Rain shimmered in the air around them, and Adam felt it catching in his hair, rolling down the back of his neck to soak into his thin sweater.  He shoved his hands in his pockets, and hunched his shoulders against the chill as Gansey approached the Camaro.  He did it like one might move in on a wild animal, carefully, every step enunciated and slow so that the creature would know you were coming.  His hand found the door handle, and it popped open.

Blue gave Gansey a second alone in the driver seat before she darted around to the other side, and got in too. 

Adam fisted his hands in his pockets, a wonderful kind of sadness swelling inside him at the sight of it—two heads tilted close together, and barely visible over the seats from the back of the car, the awful paint muted in the dull light from the street lamps that lined the block.      

He felt rather than saw Ronan looking at him, and glanced over.  Their eyes locked, and Adam felt his breath catch in his chest.  Even looking like he did right now, ruined from a sleepless night and soaked from the rain, newly orphaned in the wake of the demon, Ronan managed to be beautiful.  Gansey too, and Blue.  All three of them wore their devastation like crowns, like sunlight.

Adam wished he could do the same, but he knew the mud from the cave had caked underneath his fingernails, and blood had dried on his face, a reminder of how easily his own hands had been stolen from him.

He could not think.  It hurt too much.  His ribs squeezed around his heart, and Adam suddenly thought that he was going to start crying. Instead he went over to the Camaro, and stood next to the driver side window until Gansey rolled it down.

“Try turning it over,” he said.  Maybe it was his feverish exhaustion, or the old familiarity of the request, but Adam didn’t even attempt to stop the Henrietta from curling around his words, automatically snatching away the _g_ from _turning_.

Gansey cranked his key in the ignition, tried applying the gas, and after a moment the Camaro shuddered to life.

Adam took his hands out of his pockets, wiping them off on his jeans.

“We’ll follow you back to Monmouth.”

Gansey looked at Blue.

“I’m staying with you,” she said firmly.

“Alright then.  See you in a few minutes,” Gansey offered.  He waited until Ronan and Adam had returned to the BMW before he pulled out.  Adam squeezed the steering wheel in his fingers and watched the trail of gray that sputtered from the Camaro’s exhaust pipe. It turned yellow in the pooling light from the street lamps, and blue in the glow from the OPEN sign that blazed inside Nino’s front window as they drove past. 

Orphan Girl snuffled in the back seat.

Chainsaw rustled next to her, and let out a low croak.

Ronan leaned his forehead against the passenger window, his gaze unfocused.

There were lights blazing inside Monmouth Manufacturing.

Gansey parked in the gravel lot beside an unfamiliar car, but didn’t get out right away.  Blue stayed in the Camaro with him, and a dozen possible conversations between them looped through his head as Adam waited.  Ronan did not.  He gathered up Orphan Girl, kicking the back door of the BMW shut with his boot. Chainsaw swooped past him, flapping toward his open bedroom window, and disappearing inside the warehouse long before Ronan had searched out his key. 

Gansey and Blue joined them at the top of the second floor landing, and they all crashed through into the apartment.

Adam let out the breath he was holding, feeling like something released inside his chest as his eyes found the familiar shapes of the pool table and the sagging leather sofa, Gansey’s typically unmade bed in the middle of the room, miniature Henrietta, which was now almost completely repaired.

He loved this place, or he loved the people that loved it.

Maybe it was the same thing.

“Dick!  Where have you been?”

“Why didn’t you call us!”

Adam hovered awkwardly in the doorway as two people converged on Gansey, all expensive dark suit and slim black dress. Helen moved toward them last, looking half cross, half relieved to see that Gansey was still in one piece.  Blue hastily extracted herself from the huddle, and stepped back to stand beside Adam, her face burning scarlet.  Only Ronan seemed unperturbed by the presence of the three additional Gansey family members.  He stomped over to his bedroom and roughly shouldered open the door, disappearing into the dark space with Orphan Girl in silence.  He left the door swinging wide behind him, which was more of an invitation than Adam was used to, but he stayed where he was, a lump forming in his throat at the thought of following them.

Gansey was trying to explain without explaining, abnormally flustered.

He only settled when Blue rejoined him, quietly taking his hand.  One by one his parents and Helen fell silent, all of them looking to Blue instead, all of them with desperate questions in their eyes, forming on their lips. 

Adam had never admired her so much, because she stood her ground.

“Sorry we missed the fundraiser,” she said.

Adam wondered if she had even been invited to it in the first place.

He dragged the toe of his sneaker across the floor, and waited for the verdict.

“I think we need to talk,” Richard Gansey II said finally. “But not tonight.”

“You need to tell us everything,” his wife added.

“Over lunch tomorrow?” Helen suggested.

Gansey blinked, and checked his watch.  “I have… school.  I think.”

Adam heard the unsaid question.

_What day is it?_

He had lost track too.

How much work had he missed?  Would he be able to make up the shifts?

Helen scowled.  “Fine.  Then what about dinner.” 

It was not a question.

Gansey looked at Blue, who just shrugged, but his parents were both nodding in agreement.  After a moment, Helen pulled out her phone and started tapping around on the touch screen, probably adding the new dinner plans as a scheduled event to make it official.  Gansey let his mother hug him, tightly, and his father place a firm hand on his shoulder. They left, Helen bringing up the rear for the second time, her eyes darting over Blue and Adam before the door thudded shut behind her.

Gansey was looking at Adam when he turned back around.

“You can stay here tonight,” he said.  “If you want.”

Adam did.  He wanted it so much.    

He leaned awkwardly against the pool table as Gansey sat down on his mattress, and both of them watched Blue settle comfortably beside him.  Gansey took her hand again, their palms sliding together, fingers tangling between them. 

Ronan finally reappeared.  He had obviously been waiting for everyone else to leave, and he had changed his shirt, black for black, the dark cotton was clinging to his chest and shoulders with static.  His teeth were clamped down on the leather bands looped around his wrist.

“What are we talking about?” he demanded.  His eyes skipped uncertainly over Adam before darting away.

Gansey shrugged.  Despite his frightfully white face, and the grass stains on his damp clothes, he looked content now.  Peaceful. Adam wished he could reach inside himself and find that.  He wished he could find _anything_ underneath his skin that was not ready to tear him apart.

“What about you, Parrish?  Are you staying?” 

Ronan glared at him.  His jaw was squared for a fight, but his eyes were soft and dark and wary. Adam heard the silent _please_ twisted around his words, and knew that he was hopeless to resist it. 

He nodded, once, the movement jerky and awkward.

Gansey smiled a little brighter.  Blue reached up to stifle a yawn behind her hand.  Adam was still watching Ronan, however, and the look the other boy gave him was tentative but satisfied.  He felt warmth spark behind his ribs, deep in the confines of his chest, in a place where Cabeswater usually resided.

“Shower,” Ronan grunted, after what felt like a minute, and also like an hour.

He banged out of the room.

Adam stood there, listening to the familiar hiss of the hot tap running in the kitchen/bathroom/laundry, and tried not to think about how Ronan was probably taking his clothes off at that very moment. 

“Adam?” Blue said, a question.

He turned around too fast.  “Sorry.  What?”

Blue frowned.  “Did I miss something?  You guys seem kind of… new.”

“What?” Adam said again.  Embarrassment trickled through him, followed quickly by a cold tendril of panic.  He had no idea how he even wanted to define this thing with Ronan yet, and Blue was already asking him questions about it.

“You and Ronan,” she pressed, when he kept hesitating. “What happened?”

Adam swallowed the first response that came to him: _nothing_. 

He might not yet know how to define this tentative and lovely thing that he had started with Ronan, but he was sure lying about it was the last thing he wanted to do.  Dishonesty struck him as a very bad start to their potential relationship.

“We kissed,” he admitted finally, quietly.  “On his birthday.  At the Barns.”

Blue widened her eyes.  “Oh,” she said, like it was so hard to believe, and Adam found that he was a bit rankled by the predictable reaction.

Gansey awkwardly cleared his throat.

Adam could feel his ears burning, and he turned away, searching for a distraction and finding none.  Instead his ragged mind replayed the longer, heavier kiss shared between him and Ronan after everyone else had left, lighting on tiny details, like the way Ronan had moaned softly when Adam hitched up the hem of his shirt to brush fingers over his pale skin, how Adam had felt his right foot fall asleep while they lay tangled up on the couch, the sweetly unfamiliar taste of Ronan in his mouth, all copper and gasoline.

“You’re thinking about him _right now_ , aren’t you?” Blue said.  Her tone was teasing, and when Adam glanced back at her, she looked far too amused about the situation for his taste. 

He managed a glare that had no real fight in it. 

His embarrassment was making his skin itch.

“I’m going to check on Orphan Girl,” he mumbled.

After he had escaped her smirk, he realized that he was only making a bigger idiot of himself.  The bedroom smelled like Ronan, and his clothes and dream stuff were scattered carelessly all over the floor.  The ruined shirt that he had been wearing before, stained with blood and black shit, was in a heap with his boots next to the open cage where Chainsaw currently perched, fussily cleaning her feathers.

Adam tried to focus on Orphan Girl, who was curled up on the bed.  The soft white sheets were wrinkled up underneath her, and she was still awake, the corner of a pillow stuffed in her mouth, drool soaking through the cover. 

He sat down next to her and pulled it away.  “Are you hungry?” he said.  “I can get you some real food.”

She shook her head.

Adam gazed at her steadily for a moment, while she stared right back.  She didn’t seem to blink has much as a normal person.  Her pale hair was matted, only partially hidden underneath the muddy skullcap that she had been wearing since the very first time Adam saw her. 

He felt his breath catch in his chest. 

She looked so much like a child, but she also looked like an animal, and even more like a dream thing.  Her dusky blue eyes were huge and unblinking as Adam clumsily undid the strap of his watch and held it out for her again.  

“You can have this back,” he said.  “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”  

Orphan Girl hesitated for a moment, and then she snatched the watch from Adam, immediately clamping her sharp little teeth down on it.  There was a strange noise coming from her throat as she gnawed happily on the already worn strap.  It sounded almost like a cat did when it purred.

Adam felt a ridiculous smile pulling at his mouth. 

He rolled his eyes and added, “I don’t think that you should be eating random inanimate objects.”

“Not really up to you, is it, Parrish?”

Ronan was framed in the bedroom doorway, wearing the clean shirt he had changed into earlier along with a pair of loose gray sweats. His skin looked even paler than usual now that any remnants of the black goo had been washed away, almost ghostly, and at that Adam immediately thought of Noah.

How long had it been since they last saw him?  Was it hours, or days?

Time seemed to have stretched out, and he was so very tired.

Orphan Girl cawed softly to Ronan around the watch. She and Adam watched together as he dropped his damp towel in a heap on the floor and flopped down on the bed next to her, the mattress creaking in protest as his weight was added.  He wrestled Orphan Girl over a few inches, snatching at a bit of the pillow for himself, and then tilted his head to regard Adam cautiously with blue, blue eyes.

“I’m not fucking sleeping,” he said, when Adam was quiet.  “You can stay here if you want, I don’t care.  But I’m keeping the fucking light on.”

He did care. 

Adam could hear it in his voice, wavering and vulnerable underneath all the acid.

So he stretched out on the mattress with Orphan Girl and finally let his heavy eyes droop shut.  His face was warm again, and Adam was very conscious of how close Ronan was to him, even with a strange dream satyr curled up contentedly between them, but it was so much easier to not say anything, easier to let his quiet presence explain that he cared too.

He tugged some of the blanket across his legs, leaving his sneakers and damp jacket on because he knew Ronan would let him.

The glow of the ceiling lamp burned through his eyelids.  

Ronan was breathing, fast and quiet, on the other side of the bed.

Adam wondered drowsily what Blue and Gansey were doing. What they were thinking about at that very moment.  The bedroom door was still hanging open at his back, something that would have made him incredibly uncomfortable if this was any other normal day, but right now he was too strung out to mind it.

His body was lead, and his wrists throbbed, blood pumping through bruised veins.

There was no Cabeswater waiting to sooth the pain, but sleep came anyway.

Adam fell.

 

 *

 

When he woke up again, Orphan Girl was gone.  At some point the light had been switched off after all, and it was now properly black outside the bedroom window, inky shadows stretching across the floor.  Ronan lay on his side a few feet away.  His silkily expensive headphones were draped around his neck, the music pulsing quietly, and he had one arm tucked up underneath his head.  He was watching Adam, his expression pensive, and his eyes glittering in the dark.  

“Did I wake you up?” he said, voice soft and raw.

Adam watched his lips moving, the sharp profile of his bare shoulder. 

“No,” he said.  “I mean.  I don’t think so.”

“You were dreaming,” Ronan muttered.

“I was?” Adam reached up to rub some crusted sleep out of his eyes.  He didn’t remember having any dreams.  His mind was a black hole that started with him closing his eyes earlier and ended when he peeling them open again just a moment ago. 

He whispered, “What time is it?”

Ronan shrugged, the movement awkward where he was lying on his side. 

“Fuck if I know.”

“Is Orphan Girl okay?”

“Yeah.  Sleeping.” Ronan glanced down at the end of the mattress.  When Adam followed his gaze, he saw that the little girl was balled up on the floor, burrowed deep inside a nest of dirty clothes and the towel that Ronan had discarded after his shower.

Ronan was looking at him again.

“Parrish,” he said, when Adam turned back to him.  And then, “Adam.”

His voice was wrecked.  It took a moment for Adam to realize that Ronan had started crying, the tears no more than glistening pink lines streaked across his face in the dark bedroom.

His first, terrible instinct was to recoil.  He had never been good with emotions, unless those emotions involved anger.

But this was _Ronan_. 

Ronan, who knew anger just as intimately as Adam did, if only because he had tried so hard to shove every other feeling away. Ronan, who had just lost his mother and Cabeswater to the demon, and very nearly lost Gansey too.  Ronan, who had kissed him on his birthday like Adam was teaching him how to breathe again.

“Come here,” Adam said, tentative.

He still remembered the way his possessed hands had closed around Ronan, nails cutting into pale skin, choking the air out of him, but—

Ronan shifted over on the bed, the sheets slippery between them.  Adam pushed them back without thinking, and then Ronan was clutching at his grimy shirt with white knuckles, his face pressed into Adam’s throat, and he was still crying.  Adam reached up and ran a hand over his buzzed scalp, the bristles pricking up against his sore fingers.

He could hear the music pounding from his headphones, still faint and indistinct.

He was on fire.

“Fuck,” Ronan muttered, his voice thick with tears.  “Shit.  Fucking—”

“Stop,” Adam interrupted, softer than he meant to.

Ronan stopped.  He was still trembling, but he was mostly done crying now.  Adam brushed the pad of his thumb over a bit of tattoo, just like he had been thinking about hours earlier, and felt the ache in his chest spread all through him.

What did this mean? 

What was he even doing?

He mind had no idea, but somehow his hands did.  They dipped down to slip off the headphones Ronan had slung around his neck, travelling underneath the collar of the dark shirt he was wearing, pressed gently to the hooks and claws of dark ink, and found the wet stains Ronan had yet to wipe from his cheeks.  Both boys were trembling now, bodies pressed closer than Adam was used to, closer than he could manage to rationalize. 

Ronan made a soft noise in the back of his throat, his breath hitching.

Their chapped lips brushed once, twice, teasing the memory of a kiss even though this was probably the absolute worst time for it, and Adam closed his eyes, feeling ruined and happy and terrified.

“Fuck,” Ronan said again, his voice shattered, gasping. “Adam, fuck.”

Adam wanted to hear his name said like that again, and again, and again.

He pulled back just a fraction, his hands shaking, and blinked groggily at Ronan.

“We should stop.  I don’t want to do this wrong.  I just—I want to help you.  I want to be here.  But whatever we have is probably going to have to wait until I can think straight.”

Ronan brought his wrist to his mouth and started to gnaw on his leather bands.

“Are you mad?” Adam said.

His heart was almost pounding out of his chest.

Ronan looked at him, and his expression was complicated. Finally he said, “Do we have something?” in a very soft, very odd voice, the edges of his words ragged with a kind of primal exhaustion that Adam recognized immediately.

He thought about telling Ronan to go to sleep.

He thought about telling Ronan that they could drive to D.C. together tomorrow.

He thought, and then Adam said quietly, earnestly, “I hope so.”

 

 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this you guys, I love you all <3 Comments and kudos are so appreciated, they make my day and keep me writing! 
> 
> P.S. This work was originally intended to have multiple chapters, but in the end I like it much better as a short fic with a manageable word count and realistic expectations :) However! I do have some ideas for other scenes that might compliment it, and when (if) I get around to writing them I'll be sure to add them to this series - so if you liked this or any of my older works keep an eye out!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr where I mostly post about TRC ... @alliwannadoiswrite


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